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Saturday, October 4, 2008

The Carolina Renaissance Festival

Today my daughter and I are going to the Carolina Renaissance Festival with my mom. It's rare the three of us get to do anything together so I'm really looking forward to it. All three of us love history and the culture of times before. All three of us are romantics and love a good Christian romance story, although my daughter would rather watch a romantic movie than read it in a book.

I was twelve when my aunt gave me a box of 30 Harlequin romance novels to read. My mom hadn't read them and didn't know what I was getting into. I was hungry for some good stories and literally devoured them and reread them until I could get my hands on more. Now that I have an eleven year old daughter, Harlequin romances aren't exactly the type of reading material I want her to read, but I am trying to introduce the Heartsong Presents stories to her. Right now we are both reading Paige Winship Dooly's Treasure in the Hills.

I'm starting with Heartsong, because they are the shortest books and my daughter has ADD. Her focus isn't as long as I'd like it to be and she seems to be bored with other books. Right now on her own she's reading one of Wanda E. Brustetter's books in the children's Rachel Yoder series. I'm hoping and praying she will come to love reading as much as my mother and I.

By the way, my mother discovered Colleen Coble's Firedancer and my mother is another fan. She loves it! And now she's calling me asking me what else Colleen has written. I was happy to report that Colleen had written lots of other books.

Celina is starting to show a great interest in history and got upset at me the other day because I joined the RWA Beau Monde chapter group without her. For those of you who don't know, it's a chapter for writers who write in the Regency time period (1800-1811), although the period can extend by other's definitions.

When I explained that she had to be a writer who wrote in that time period, her lips twisted and she thought about it. My next question was are you going to be a writer? The answer was, "I don't know," but she didn't rule it out. Typically, she doesn't like writing, but I have yet to get the child to write something that doesn't include dialogue. She even tries to put dialogue in a report or a research paper. What do you think? Do I have a novelist in the making?

So today I'm hoping to put her into another time period and place and make history come alive for her. While she doesn't have a Renaissance dress, she does have a colonial dress we bought her in Williamsburg and I've told her she can wear that. Maybe if she experiences the culture of how it was back then, the way they dressed, ate, entertained and worked and had fun, some of the books we are reading will come ALIVE for her.

The photos are from last year's festival. In order: 1) Lady playing a harp 2) My daughter is sitting between her two cousins riding in style 3) A knight in a javelin contest 4) A rocking horse ride for children. All their rides are by man-made means just as they were during the time period. 5) Man playing the bagpipes. 6) Me, trying to play one of those stick games and failing miserably.

2 comments:

Jenn, I was at the airport in MN and sat next to a girl who had the prettiest blond hair and she had it braided more intricately than anything I'd seen before. She had attended the Renaissance Festival up there. I'd love to let them braid my hair like that. Glad you and Celina and your family had fun.